Wikipedia talk:Votes for deletion/July 2004

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Length and format of votes

There have been a few essays posted recently to VfD. Some suggestions:

  • The purpose of a VfD listing is to decide whether or not the listed article is to be deleted. Anything not relevant to that decision belongs somewhere else (typically this talk page or the article's own talk page).
  • This is important not just to the many who are contributing to VfD, but also to the poor admin who at the end of the process needs to read it all and try to determine whether consensus has been reached. Typically they will be doing lots of articles in a sitting, not just the one you are interested in. So fair go!

The goal of all of this is of course to allow VfD to do its important job as efficiently as possible, while allowing other important discussions to happen efficiently too, and leave us all as much time as possible to create and improve articles. Andrewa 16:13, 30 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Mea culpa. Quite a bit of this is my fault. I guess that having a separate sub-page, and the leisure of not fearing a imminent edit conflicts made me more loquacious that I should have been. I'll try to be more brief in future comments. -- orthogonal 16:34, 30 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Delete before archiving!

I would greatly appreciate if those who archive the page actually deleted the articles that were voted to be deleted. Once in an archive they are forgotten like Template:Persecution and will only be deleted if an admin comes across the outdated Vfd-note and feels like checking back. Get-back-world-respect 20:28, 9 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Actually, people do go through Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Old to clear things out. Please be patient, we archive when items have been listed for the customary 5 days, to keep the VfD page itself manageable. It may take a little bit longer for the actual deletion to occur, but it will happen if appropriate. I'm actually in the process of removing the links to this particular template right now. --Michael Snow 21:32, 9 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Vfd proposal

I propose that Vfd be made a special page and software support be incorporated for listing a page for deletion (assuming that it is technically possible). Vfd IS a special page. It does not have to have the normal wiki character as long as the sections have the wiki character. It is just a listing of the pages which are being considered for deletion. So let's make it that. I think the current look can be retained even with a special page and people who want an alternate look (who don't want to see all the details at once) can have that if it is a special page. A special delete this page link could be provided for adminstrators which would delete the page and archive the debate automatically. shouldn't be a problem as all of this is fixed procedure and does not interfere with the other (not interdependent). Although I must confess, I can't anticipate any programming problems that could arise. Thanks for reading. --Hemanshu 14:26, 11 Jul 2004 (UTC)

This seems to be the logical solution to the problem of VfD getting too large. But it would have to make use of subpages, as in, not show all the votes on the one page. Possibly have a list of all articles under consideration, with a tally beside them, and a link to view the votes for that specific article. - Mark 06:35, 15 Jul 2004 (UTC)

New format for VfD?

I've suggested a less misleading format for VfD at Template talk:VfDFooter. Basically, I explain how the "add to this discussion" link could be improved. Johnleemk | Talk 11:10, 14 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I have another suggestions. Currently the VfD page incorporates a subpage for each disputed article, in the form VfD/foo. If article "foo" is deleted, the votes are copied to the "foo" talk page, which is not deleted. If "foo" is not deleted, the votes are copied to a subpage of the "foo" talk page, Talk:foo/Votes for Deletion. How about we just make a Talk:foo/Votes for deletion initially, and incorporate that page on VfD, rather than a VfD subpage? -- orthogonal 11:39, 14 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Excuse my ignorance, but why are the comments moved in either case? Why not just cross-link the sub-page by adding a brief summary and "see [[Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/foo]] for details" to the article's Talk page? Is there a technical reason that favors storage of the discussion as a sub-page of the article rather than as a sub-page of VfD? Rossami
The other problem is that this like the various other archiving schemes we've had for VfD is neither well documented nor consistently followed. The documentation is the basic problem, and I don't feel qualified to do it or I would. I'm still looking for what happened to the VfD discussion for Hippophilia, which was kept. Andrewa 19:43, 15 Jul 2004 (UTC)
(PS recovered the Hippophilia debate now from the VfD page history. Andrewa 16:43, 16 Jul 2004 (UTC))
Well, generally it makes for less typing — what do you prefer, typing out Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Ghey or /Delete? Moving pages can be exasperating for a sysop, though. Johnleemk | Talk 09:12, 16 Jul 2004 (UTC)
I would recommend against using the shortcut [[/Delete]] because that form of the link will fail to follow if/when the page is moved to a different title. I see your point though - [[Ghey/Delete]] would be a little bit less typing than [[Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Ghey]]. Rossami 13:30, 16 Jul 2004 (UTC)
Why not leave the voting in the VFD sub-page and add that to the article's talk page using the {{{}}} syntax just as it's added here? No page-moving required. And it shouldn't be too difficult to create a new sub-page: if you include a link of the form [[/Ghey]] when you're creating the new section on VFD, when you preview your work you get a red link which you can click to create the new sub-page; you can then copy/paste back. HTH (Hope it's coherent :-) --Phil | Talk 13:57, Jul 16, 2004 (UTC)

Along with some other changes, I updated the template to make the sub-page a sub of the article's page rather than a sub of the VfD page. Graham noticed that it may create a new problem for us. (comment copied in from my talk page) Thoughts? Rossami 01:38, 17 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Well an early difficulty is that the deletion debate pages show up on Special:Newpages and I can see that that could cause problems in the future. Other than that I'm impartial either way. -- Graham ☺ | Talk 23:47, 16 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Grounds for delete

On Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Dr. Ani Jones, Rick wrote:

Patent nonsense and false information are always valid speedy deletes.

I don't think this is true at all. Patent nonsense is grounds for speedy delete, yes, but there once was a view that this sort of thing didn't qualify. The definition of patent nonsense was always too restrictive IMO, that's why I said I was unsure, and if it's changed I'm glad because I think it must for reasons of minimum waste of time.

But false information is not even a reason for normal delete, let alone speedy. Our policy is to correct the information and keep the article, assuming it is encyclopedic. So the issue on VfD is whether it is encyclopedic, not whether it is accurate.

This works both ways. An article with allegedly inaccurate information should be kept if the topic is encyclopedic, and either fixed or listed as an accuracy dispute. Conversely, an essay should be deleted even if the author argues that it is all accurate and nobody challenges this. Andrewa 19:43, 15 Jul 2004 (UTC)

How are we supposed to "correct the information" when the article's title is made up? How are we supposed to "correct the information" when there is no valid information to correct it to? RickK 21:48, Jul 15, 2004 (UTC)

Isn't this a semantic dispute. I would assume that Andrewa would not consider the type of article you are discussing to be a case of "false information" - it sounds like "patent nonsense" to me. john k 22:33, 15 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I don't think it's just a semantic dispute, although that's always a danger with policy issues.

What I'm saying is that Rick's comment, which was a reply to my vote to delete, is not our current policy. My fear is it will mislead others, paricularly newcomers either to VfD or to Wikipedia, if it goes unchallenged.

IMO the issues are:

1. Is false information always grounds for deletion? Rick says it is. I say it isn't.

At the risk of being pedantic, I'd say that it never is. But that could be seen as semantics. Often blatent inaccuracy is a sign that there are other problems which are valid grounds for deletion. That's not a big issue to me.

2. Is this article patent nonsense? Rick says it is. I say it's not clear to me either way.

I agree that patent nonsense is a candidate for speedy deletion. But, when I have proposed similar articles in the past as patent nonsense, some sysops have objected strongly. I'm closer to Rick's thinking than you might think.

Rick doesn't seem to have addressed either of these issues above. He seems to be arguing above that the page should be deleted, but again that's what I think too, and this talk page isn't the place to discuss that issue even if I didn't. This is a place to discuss, among other things, the policies etc. behind the votes. Andrewa 03:14, 16 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Andrewa, you have me thoroughly confused. The article in question was written about a nonexistant superhero. There is no such person in any known literature. If the being does not exist, how do we edit the article to make it exist? If we can't delete it, what do we do with it? Leave it here for eternity? And now you're arguing that we shouldn't be discussing it here, when it was YOU, YOURSELF, who said on the VfD page for the article that the discussion should be moved here. Are you messing with my head, or what? RickK 04:47, Jul 16, 2004 (UTC)

Then let's take it slowly. I'm very sorry that you're confused and I want to clear it up. For a start, I voted to delete the article, and I have never suggested that it should be kept. Is that understood? Just that, for the moment? Andrewa 05:16, 16 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Then why are you saying that it can never be deleted? RickK 19:06, Jul 16, 2004 (UTC)
I certainly didn't mean to say that. Where do you think I said it? Andrewa 19:34, 16 Jul 2004 (UTC)
Look up a few paragraphs - false information is not even a reason for normal delete, let alone speedy. RickK 19:48, Jul 16, 2004 (UTC)
This is criticism of something you said on the VfD subpage (quoted above), which was a sweeping statement about deletion policy. My criticism of this doesn't say anything about whether the page should be deleted for other reasons. It certainly doesn't say the page should never be deleted. Is that any clearer? Andrewa 02:02, 17 Jul 2004 (UTC)
Nope. not even a reason for normal delete How does that mean anything other than it can never be deleted? RickK 04:22, Jul 17, 2004 (UTC)
I said false information is not even a reason for normal delete, let alone speedy. This means that I'm challenging one reason that has been given for deletion. Elsewhere I challenged another reason you gave as well. But these two aren't the only reasons for deletion, and IMO some of the other reasons are valid reasons, which is why I voted for delete. Andrewa 07:09, 17 Jul 2004 (UTC)
I'm still at a complete loss as to trying to understand what you're saying, but I guess we're just going to have to move on. RickK 19:13, Jul 17, 2004 (UTC)
Sounds good. We've both had our say. Peace! Andrewa 00:07, 18 Jul 2004 (UTC)

To answer RickK: If the false information can be fixed, then the article should be fixed and not deleted/listed on vfd. Pcb21| Pete 07:48, 21 Jul 2004 (UTC)

User friendliness of this page

I have to say it - it is an enormous pain in the ass to add entries for deletion. Perhaps those of you who go through and do it a lot are used to the intricacies of it, but whenever I come across something I want to list, I hesitate due to the fact that I know it'll take me forever to format it correctly. Isn't there any way to make this simpler so as to allow for broader participation? (That said, the current format is, of course, very user friendly in terms of voting for deletion. But I'm not sure that excuses the ridiculous complicatedness of the process of listing a new article. Why not just have links to the various subpages, and not worry about reproducing the text? john k 22:06, 17 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I totally second that - not that I can think of a better solution, but the current format is indeed a pain to use. Would it be possible to have pages with a VfD header appear automatically on this page in the correct format, as happens with speedy deletes? -- Ferkelparade 22:14, 17 Jul 2004 (UTC)
Sounds good to me. I just did my first request for a delete and thought never again... Refdoc 00:25, 18 Jul 2004 (UTC)
Every time someone suggests making this page into just a page of links (and not reproducing the text), the suggestion gets shouted down (including by me). Moving the discussion text off this page will make it very hard to keep track of the conversations. I read each entry and it's discussion and I return to them frequently to make sure that the discussion remains honest. Moving all the discussions out to individual pages would make that virtually impossible. I think that would make the decisions even more vulnerable to sockpuppets and others who are attempting to deliberately abuse the system.
Personally, I don't think the nomination process is that hard - a couple of copy/pastes using the boilerplate at the bottom of the page - but I got a lot of practice while helping to convert the nominations into that format when we started using it. I'd like to see the nomination process turned into a special page (like the "move" button uses). With that approach, I think we could automate all the steps. Unfortunately, I don't know enough about the underlying code to do it right. Any volunteers? Rossami 02:21, 18 Jul 2004 (UTC)
Ooh, now that's a good idea... john k 09:46, 18 Jul 2004 (UTC)
How could the list of links make it harder? If you really want to keep rereading every discussion as it develops, you do that by opening a new window for each page, and closing it after reading before opening another; you reap the benefit of not having to reload the whole -- uh, 39KB for VfD plus, uh, 146 discussions as of 27 hours ago, at about 1.2 KB each (average of 5 evenly spaced ones) is something on the order of -- 214 KB each time you edit one discussion. And in fact, instead of the unusable history of VfD you could use "What links here" on the list of links, and ignore the discussions that have had no changes since your last perusal. --Jerzy(t) 04:06, 2004 Jul 21 (UTC)
146 clicks and separate loads instead of one click and then speed-read down the list. Sure, that one load can take a long time but it's in the background while I work on other things. By the way, if I need to contribute to a discussion, I always open the discussion link in a separate window so that I don't have to wait for it reload before I can move on to the next topic. Rossami 21:19, 26 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Listings by anons

The first few listings on July 20 were all from User:67.160.75.230, an anon who has been a good contributor.

But, as we don't accept votes from IPs, I don't think we should accept listings either. Other thoughts? Andrewa 01:32, 20 Jul 2004 (UTC)

  • I think accepting listings from anons is fine. If we don't accept them, people will still post them. Then we have to delete the posting and repost it... just seems like a pain. The best thing to do would be to not allow any edits by anonymous users, that is, make it a rule that you must have a user name and be signed in to edit, but until then I don't object to listings for deletion by anonymous users. Exploding Boy 02:37, Jul 20, 2004 (UTC)
  • I also think accepting nomination from anons is fine. I'm even okay with anons who contribute facts to the discussion. I have come to agree that anon votes must be steeply discounted at the end of the voting (because of the risk of sockpuppetry), but I've never been comfortable with an attempt to rule that they can not vote at all. Rossami 13:13, 20 Jul 2004 (UTC)
    • I agree. Let anons do what they like, and admins can be trusted to give as much weight to each vote as appropriate. Pcb21| Pete 07:43, 21 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Help deleting a category

I tried to list Category:Atheism and agnosticism [1]. Is placing a catagory here not possible? Something is clearly wrong. Sam [Spade] 04:46, 22 Jul 2004 (UTC)

[[Category:Atheism and agnosticism]] puts the article it appears in into the category. [[:Category:Atheism and agnosticism]] makes a clickable link to the category. It's just like with interlanguage links. And you want Wikipedia:Categories for deletion anyway. -- Cyrius|✎ 05:17, 22 Jul 2004 (UTC)
Actually, the stated purpose of Categories for Deletion is to delete categories that are empty. Categories that are not empty and need some debate end up there too, but I suspect they'd be better off on Vfd where they will get wider exposure and a more well rounded debate. There's a few unresolved discussions on Cfd that I've actually considered moving here. I'm tempted to say that unless it's a spelling error or obvious, it should probably go here. --ssd 05:07, 28 Jul 2004 (UTC)
Agreed. If anything, non-empty categories (the removal of which impacts many pages and undoes the work of many contributors) need more discussion and consideration than regular articles before deletion. Jgm 18:38, 28 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Templates for deletion?

As with Wikipedia:Categories for deletion discussed in previous section, Wikipedia:Templates for deletion is needed. Following the Template:VfDFooter instructions means putting a reference (note a subst, not a normal transclusion) to Template:vfd into every page that already uses the VfD-nominated template (unless the nominator goes around prematurely removing them) and into every page that starts using it during VfD process. Removing references also improperly presumes the outcome of VfD.

The issues for template deletion are also usually different for templates anyway. --Jerzy(t) 15:50, 2004 Jul 26 (UTC)